In 1979 I was in high school, but hadn't outgrown the beach. I enjoyed the crashing of the waves in winter, watching the snow melt off the Camel as the waves splashed and licked around his body. The water around him might freeze slightly as the tide went out, but the cove never froze. During the winter the boats and crab pot bouys were gone and the cove looked barren. Only the ravens and eagles remained, but weren't actively seeking food. Bears and deer were gone and Camel huddled down against the cold North winds. There were rarely any picnicers at the Rec Area, only on rare warm weekend afternoons. Camel could see us heading up the driveway in the dark to catch the school bus, wearing our reflective clothing or carrying flashlights. Camel could see us loading up the family car with ski gear on the weekends. Eaglecrest was in it's infancy and my Colorado-born parents were thrilled with the possibility of teaching their children to ski. Camel could see the snowmen we built, watched as we decorated the house for the holidays, and waited patiently outside while we ate chicken noodle stew cooked in the fireplace.
In 1982 I returned for the summer from my first year of college "down south" and eagerly looked out over the cove. Camel rested there, though I no longer ran to the beach to collect rocks or shells, no longer grabbed a fishing pole to sling Pixies at the Humpies. I still admired the view, though. Sometimes I'd peer through the telescope to see if any friends were hanging out at the Rec Area. I usually worked in the summers and didn't have time to wander the beach or even go out on the boat that my parents usually had moored there. I didn't have time to sit upon the Hat or Camel's back anymore.
As I finished college and became a young career woman I had even less time for the beach or the cove. Camel watched my sister become a teen and my young brother teach himself to fish from the shore, launch his small boat for trips out to Aaron Island, watched him and his friends pitch a tent on the lawn and camp out. Camel watched him befriend a crow who would come to his name one summer, watched him learn the bear tracks around the Humpy spawning stream, and watched him grow into a young man who loved the sea.
I left the cove and Juneau in 1989, with the draw of Colorado in my blood. I said goodbye to my family, the Camel, and the cove and took off for the land of cowboys and mountains. Sadly, I wasn't at the cove when it claimed the life of a dear neighbor in December, 1990. Frank Maier was a Lena Cove original in my mind, and when the cove took his life, I was sad for my family and their traumatic experience in helping with the recovery of his body. I'm sure that Camel cried tears that day.
It wasnt' until 1991 when I came home for a visit, bringing my new husband from our home in Colorado, that I began to pay attention to the cove again. I noticed that the tide didn't come up as high as it used to, the rocks that once outlined a path to the water had shifted and the path was no longer obvious, just a hint of what it had been. I noticed that the grasses around the Camel were different than in my childhood and that dandelions were everywhere. They had never been down on the beach before! I noticed that at the very lowest low tide, there was at least
10 more feet of mudflats than there used to be. The changes had been gradual, but when I took the time to look, I could see them. Camel was still there, but was his hump higher than it used to be? Why did the grasses look so much taller? Hat was the same, but the tide no longer encircled it regularly - just once in a while. And the fireweed patch! It used to be just a few plants, but now it was most of the beach.
By 1996, when I came to back to Juneau with my second son as a newborn and my older son as a toddler, I noticed that the Alders hung so far out over the house and the planted Maple trees in the yard were no longer twigs, but were sturdy, thick-trunked mature trees. I began to see the beach as a Mom... "be careful, don't fall on the barnacles", "wear your coat, it's raining", "don't wade out there too deep", "wear your boots", "take OFF those muddy boots!" Camel must have been smiling inside to hear me talk to my children, all the while remembering how often I didn't follow my own mother's reminders. I taught my children to recognize the sound of the eagles still living in the tree above the house, to know the difference between a crow, a raven, and a seagull. We watched for seals in the cove, counted the fish jumping, and beachcombed for pretty shells each summer. I'm sure Camel enjoyed the return of children to the beach, as all the neighborhood children were grown by then.
By 2001, my now 6 and 8 year old sons had visited the beach every summer of their childhood and were learning to love Grandma's Cove, as they called it. My older son, who had been born and living in Colorado around ranches and ditch water all his young life once said when he was about 4 years old, "that's a Big Ditch!" when he saw it from an airplane, so occasionally they'd call it Grandma's Big Ditch. They had learned the important names of Camel and Chinaman's Hat, they knew when the blueberries and huckleberries would be ripe in the back yard. Though they were Colorado boys, they knew a Pink salmon from a Silver and knew which lures to toss out into the cove to catch a fish. They knew what a "double ugly" was and how to pick the Devil's Club thorns out of their hands. Camel must have delighted in seeing the boys squat down for hours over the tide pools around his belly, peering at the critters within, trying to catch Sticklebacks and Blennies. We spent much of that summer on the cove and since I could take my eyes off my sons then, my appreciation for the cove began to deepen and I noticed more changes. The number of houses around the cove had exploded. Where was the old familiar blinking red light above Lena Point? Why had the tree line along Lena Point changed so dramatically? What had Camel been seeing the last 15 years that I had missed? Where did all those moorings and crab pot bouys come from? Where was the once-rushing stream to the North? It seemed like just a trickle of iron-filled water now. Where had all the trees on Lena Point gone? My longing to return to the Cove began to stir and I wanted my children to have at least some of the Alaskan childhood that I had had.
It was 2004 before my husband and I uprooted our family from our Colorado ranch and took off for our Alaskan adventure. I wanted to get home and he wanted a change of career, so it was time. Oddly enough, we decided to explore some other part of Alaska while our children were still young and chose to live in Wasilla. For me, it was coming home to Alaska, for him it was a career move and change-of-pace, and for the children, it was part of an adventure. The cove and Camel still called, though, and we found ourselves paying for airfare, tanks of gas, and ferry tickets to get to Juneau a couple of times a year for family visits. By this time, there was a new baby - a nephew to me - at the cove peering out the window learning the names of Camel and Chinaman's Hat, and a niece on the way. My appreciation for the cove, the water, and the beaches of southeast deepened while I lived up North. The Ted Stevens Research Center had begun to take shape, carving a dramatically different tree line from Camel's point of view, there was a new "cut" of road above Auke Rec which dramatically increased traffic speed and flow on the highway above, the family home now used "city water" instead of a feed from the now almost-extinct stream to the north, the salmonberry bushes were almost gone from the driveway and where had all the blueberry bushes in the backyard gone? Were there really fewer bushes than in my childhod or was it just my adult eye that realized there never were really very many? I still don't know.
Camel was at my side when the cove gave me a horrible scare in 2006 when I THOUGHT it had taken the life of my younger son who was out kayaking. I always watched carefully when he was kayaking and instructed him to stay close to shore and take a route only toward the Rec Area, not toward the mouth of the cove. Once I turned my back to go into the house briefly and when I looked again his bright yellow kayak was gone. I could barely see what appeared to be an upside down kayak just underwater near the Rec Area and it was shifting, appearing to contain an upside-down kayaker struggling to get out. I panicked, screamed for my father and brother nearby to launch the raft, but I knew if he'd been underwater thus far and would still be under when we could reach him, it would be too late. At the peak moment of my panic, my brother's much sharper eyes saw my son safely in an upright kayak glide out from behind a tall stand of grasses near the Humpy spawning stream. What I had thought was an upside down kayak was only a large rock, covered in golden shifting seaweed, that had just been covered by the rising tide. I fell into my brother's arms in relief and will never forget how quickly the water can take a life.
In 2007, the call of the cove and the Camel were overwhelming me and I was pestering my husband to leave Wasilla and move to Juneau before our sons were grown and gone. Our younger one was 11, going into middle school and the older one was nearly 14, going into high school. The dream of giving my children the chance to experience the cove fully - in all its seasons - might finally become a reality. When my Colorado-living father decided to buy a modest boat for fishing the waters of southeast AND we went in on the purchase, the decision was made. The boat would be moored on the family bouy at Lena Cove and we would move to Juneau. The Camel watched as we came across the mouth of Lena cove with our sons, vehicles, and entire household in a u-haul on the Fairweather from Haines one June day. I'm quite sure Camel even muttered an "I Told You So" as we pulled into the driveway to live at Grandma's house for a few months until we found a Juneau home of our own.
Now, in 2010, the cove is once again my home to some extent. We live on the forested side of Glacier Highway near the turn off to Lena Rec Area, so I am only a short walk with the dogs from the head of Lena Cove. I can't see it from my home, but I can feel it. I am frequently at my mother's house and admire and/or photograph it often, in all seasons. My now 14 and 16 year old sons have the hearts of Colorado cowboys, but have gained the wisdom of Alaskans for the local flora and fauna, and have an appreciation and understanding of fishing and boating in Southeast. They pull crab pots, troll for salmon, and fish down deep for halibut. They can wield a fillet knife and know where the blueberries are. They hunt for deer and bear with their father and bullet down the slopes of Eaglecrest in the winter. Camel watches them as they do chores at their grandmother's house and smiles when he sees my younger son run down the beach with a fishing pole at the first sign of Pinks returning to the cove. This spring, Camel observed the oddity of that same son deciding to become a cold water swimmer. In March, he donned a full wet suit and began to swim in the cove, pulling his older brother in a raft with a lead line around his waist. After six weeks of training in Lena, he swam across the Gastineau Channel - to meet a personal goal. Camel watched as we dug for clams this winter, watches as my neice and nephew are old enough to venture out onto the beach alone and as the neighbor's grandchildren now come to visit the cove.
In a geophysical sense, Camel has risen farther out of the water than he was 35 years ago. The mud flats of the Rec Area at a superlow tide now stretch closer to being parallel with Camel more than ever before. The familiar rocks have shifted slightly and I believe that my observations are in line with what I once read about in Alaska magazine: glacial rebound. I believe that my unofficial and highly unscientific thoughts and memories could be documented somewhere by photos and measurements, and I would venture to bet that the beaches of the cove have lifted somewhat. Even the highest tides don't surround Camel anymore and they rarely come up around the Hat, submerging it like they once did regularly. The flourishing grasses, weeds, and flowers on the beach tell me that the tides no longer come up as high as they did in 1974.
I am left with more questions than answers: What else has Camel seen over the years? I can only speculate. When was he born, tectonically speaking? How much further will he rise? What did he see when the Auk-Kwan were at their winter home nearby? Did the salmon and crab flourish, providing them with food like it does for us? What was Lena Cove's Tlingit name? Who gave it the current name, anyway? Why do I know so little about a place that has been integral to my life for 35 years? What will happen with the oil seeping out of the Princess Kathleen on the Point? How will the NOAA facility change the cove in time? How many more houses will be built on the Lena Point road, as those lots are sold off? How will that change the treeline once again, and where will all their sewage drain? Will Camel see MY grandchildren play on the beach, or will the family home have to be sold one day? Will the Camel and the cove draw my children back when they are adults, like it has for my brother, my sister, and me?
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